Not One Member Read the Stimulus Bill??!!

If by “line item” you mean the “line item veto” then you can forget that. For better or ill, that would give the president nearly ALL power!
As it is now, Congress can put in items it thinks necessary and provided it contains enough to make the president want it, then he’ll sign it or let
it become law without his signature. Line item veto is completely inconsistent with PRO state’s rights or small (say weak) government thinking.

Actually, I was thinking of nothing even remotely resembling a p-Residential veto (and the p-Resident would be completely irrelevant in my ideal
situation at that early phase).

[hypothetical Example: Question #1,296: Should the Schwarznegger Act dated March 23, 2015 be repealed? Yea or Nay] Then tally the Yeas and Nays and
write up the passed Bills or Act#2016 (which should number something less than or equal to the total number of line-item votes taken, I would think).

It would be at this phase that the Executive branch would [likely line-item veto subvert in the current dysfunctional system] kill the process,
sending that line only back to Congress (for a 2/3 majority OVERRIDE) or else off to its legislative grave.

Think of it as Constitutional "speed voting" (something like speed dating) in the interests of efficiency and very short legislative sessions.

Gone would be the "attached" "pork riders" that hold up Bills for months or years on end. The votes would be a (possibly very long) list of
Yes/No questions (with very little room for discussion). We wouldn't need quite so many lawyers and career politicians that way either.

I actually think that local "town councils" or much more States' rights are a better idea too. One might as well work on the "most broken" parts
of Washington first, right?

That whole "unread factor" especially applies to the outgoing administration and current Congress. If they had much less to read, I would think
they could do a somewhat better job. I'd just like to see the "legislative process" "leaned up" by orders of magnitude.

I'd be for kicking that archaic Electoral College "to the curb" pronto, too. (How many countries have one of those vestigial, inefficient
dinosaurs?)

Originally posted by Leto
This thing about Republicans not being able to read the entire bill before voting on it is BS, they got staffers for that. How do you think they've
been able to find all the "pork" they've been talking about for the past two weeks.

Anyone who thinks senators and congressmen actually sit down to read bills is insane, they're too busy for that, they have staffers to do all the
reading for them.

All anyone was asking for is 48 hours...not 12 hours starting at 11:00 PM after hand written notes adding a few 100 billion to it.

My goodness! Did anyone even bother to read D&C #132? How on earth did they let that slip by without anyone noticing it? I guess they were pretty
sneaky, burying it in that big 1,000 page document and hoping nobody would catch it:

Originally posted by silent thunder
My goodness! Did anyone even bother to read D&C #132? How on earth did they let that slip by without anyone noticing it? I guess they were pretty
sneaky, burying it in that big 1,000 page document and hoping nobody would catch it:

People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. History repeats itself in regular cycles. This truth is well known among our principal
men who are engaged in forming an imperialism of the world. While they are doing this, the people must be kept in a state of political antagonism.

The question of tariff reform must be urged through the organization known as the Democratic Party, and the question of protection with the
reciprocity must be forced to view through the Republican Party.

By thus dividing voters, we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us, except as teachers to the common
herd. Thus, by discrete actions, we can secure all that has been so generously planned and successfully accomplished.

Sound familiar?

Notice Who is standing behind TPOTUS these days?
In fact most of the higher up Politicians these days are involved somehow with Bankers/Wall St/Lobbists...

Originally posted by Leto
This thing about Republicans not being able to read the entire bill before voting on it is BS, they got staffers for that. How do you think they've
been able to find all the "pork" they've been talking about for the past two weeks.

I don't think anyone's claiming that they've never had access to some revision of the bill. What we're discussing and have previously mentioned is
that Pellosi, Reid and their buddies had a closed door session to edit the bill Wednesday evening and did not make the scanned pdfs of their changes
available until 11PM the night before the vote. That's unacceptable. These staffers your talking about would have had to sit on the site hitting
refresh till the bills were available and stay up all night speed reading it. No time to cross reference the changes or track down what "insert 6A"
written in the margin even refers to.

That's a far cry from the transparency and bipartisanship we were all promised.

Originally posted by skeptic1
I looked through it and I just saw a handful (compared to the total bill) of handwritten notes in some of the margins, some areas blocked out, some
areas scribbled out.

Thanks for your response.

And that's why I think Boehner (who wants us to know that his name is pronounced BAY-nor) is making a huge deal out of nothing.

those handwritten notes were allegedly put in during the closed door session that the Republicans were supposedly kept out of.

That meeting they're calling a "closed-door session" on Feb 11th was a relatively short meeting between Reid and Pelosi (The Senate Majority Leader
and the Speaker of the House) to iron out some of the differences in the House and Senate Versions of the bill. Only EVERYONE else was also "kept
out", not just Republicans. And I had heard about this meeting days before it happened, so it's not like it was a surprise. There were MANY meetings
with all involved during that 24 or so hours. This was just ONE of the meetings.

The Republicans in Congress, led by Boehner, are showing their asses over things like this and really, people can see it. It's embarrassing. The
Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House happen to both be Democrats and Boehner and his friends are going to have to get used to it.

Originally posted by yadboy
I don't think anyone's claiming that they've never had access to some revision of the bill. What we're discussing and have previously mentioned is
that Pellosi, Reid and their buddies had a closed door session to edit the bill Wednesday evening and did not make the scanned pdfs of their changes
available until 11PM the night before the vote. That's unacceptable. These staffers your talking about would have had to sit on the site hitting
refresh till the bills were available and stay up all night speed reading it. No time to cross reference the changes or track down what "insert 6A"
written in the margin even refers to.

That's a far cry from the transparency and bipartisanship we were all promised.

In other words all this BS about not having enough time to read [s]1100[/s] 647 pages
(www.huffingtonpost.com...) is just that, BS. The new revisions to the bill is just the few
handful revisions that the three Republicans demanded to be put into the bill for their vote.

The bill actually shrunk a bit, remember when it was over $800 billion? Among other things these three Republicans demanded that money that would
have gone to school funding be taken out, this is why Democrats are pissed.

If anything these poor staffers probably only have at most ten pages of revisions to analyse, they probably got that done in less than an hour, about
as fast as it took Gretta Susteren on Fox News the other day

Whatever your read on the situation is, the fact of the matter is everyone in congress voted that the final bill should be available to everyone
(including John Q. Public) for 48-hours before that vote started. Of course that didn't happen, did anyone really think it would. This is just the
tip of the iceberg, this situation will really make the Democrats feel they can do whatever they want. If this bill is any indication, they will make
things 10X worse than it would be if they had turned a blind eye.

What has happened to the transparency Pres Obama promised all along. We get a 1100 page bill and no one reads it, yet it get's passed.

I know the apologists are going to say that you something like this isn't written overnight, and that is the real problem. It get's very easy to
hid things in a bill of that length, making it impossible to know exactly what you are voting on.

This actually brings up a good question "How many bills do our members of Congress actually read?".

The bill actually shrunk a bit, remember when it was over $800 billion? Among other things these three Republicans demanded that money that would have
gone to school funding be taken out, this is why Democrats are pissed. If anything these poor staffers probably only have at most ten pages of
revisions to analyze, they probably got that done in less than an hour . .

What is a nincompoop? It’s a person who applauds when his own self interest is ignored and removed from a bill while everyone else's stays
in! Of all the things any rational society would want to stimulate it must surely be the education of their own children!? But NOT SO if
you are a Murdoch lemming! Or a Limbaugh devotee!

I have anything FOX OFF my remote. I HATE Rupert Murdoch. He is the single person who has done more than anyone to destroy the concept of JOURNALISM
that Edward R. Morrow, Huntley-Brinkley and Walter Cronkite brought to the tv screen.

When the legislature has to get information on a bill from the media that speaks volumes about what a flawed process we have. Ron Paul says [the]
stimulus documentation was impossible to read . .

No one can help but like Ron Paul. But he has a screw loose. His constant acceptance is because he tells the truth no one else can. Yet his solution
to the world’s problems are fantasy. So you have to humor the guy. We need him there - in Congress - to tell the truth from time to time, but
really, no one can accept his solutions. I believe Ron is a Libertarian. He converted to Republicanism to gain his seat in Congress. But you must
surely admit my definition of a libertarian is very close to the truth: “An anarchist in drag.”

I’ve already argued we have TOO much democracy. At the local level, including especially school boards, the state level and the federal level. Of
all, the Federal level is the LEAST to suffer from too much democracy.

Briefly, I am referring to the fact too many posts or jobs are on the ballot. Typically, we have maybe a Congressmen, a state representative, a state
senator, the state’s attorney general, a city councilman, the clerk of courts. Then there will be 2 or 3 judges up for election. Finally, there may
be 3 or 4 (or more) initiatives and a constitutional amendment or 2 for consideration.

The ordinary citizen is overwhelmed. Even the extra-ordinary citizen is overwhelmed. There is no single source you can go to in order to learn about
those varied issues or candidates from which you are expected to choose between RESPONSIBLY. The end result is those who are best organized, best
funded, and whose names are most recognized most often win!

OK, enough on that. I don’t know the solution. We cannot go back to the good old days of city and state “machines.” Although it is worthy to
note that ALL of our presidents were the product of smoke filled rooms until the 1970s! And we did well by them, too!

From my perspective Ron Paul lost the election because MSM did paint him as having a screw loose. For the life of me, I don't see it. If his
proposals are fantasy, as you say, then maybe we ought to widen our scope of reality so this fantasy can be reality. Too many great ideas have been
stifled over time because someone said: "No, that's impossible".

From my perspective Ron Paul lost the election because MSM did paint him as having a screw loose. For the life of me, I don't see it. If his
proposals are fantasy, as you say, then maybe we ought to widen our scope of reality so this fantasy can be reality.

I cannot explain it. I cannot understand it. But America has been spending about $3.3 t. a year for several years. The annual revenues for America are
about $2.5-$2.7 t. a year. About $300 b. of those revenues are already PLEDGED to either future Social Security payments or to Medicare and to 20
other Trust Funds. So our REAL current spending over current NET revenues is closer to $800 b. a year.

YET, no responsible person in politics will tell us the obvious. We must pay more in taxes, NOT less. To see how much our forefathers paid from 1913
onward, go to this website: www.truthandpolitics.org... WARNING do not go here if you have a weak stomach!

ON BANKS. Hugh McCulloch, the newly appointed U.S. Comptroller of the Currency and later the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, wrote a letter to
American banking institutions. Here are some excerpted highlights:

Let no loans be made that are not secured beyond a reasonable contingency. Do nothing to encourage speculation. Give facilities only to legitimate and
prudent transactions. Distribute your loans rather than concentrate them in a few hands.

Large loans to a single individual or firm, although sometimes proper and necessary, are generally injudicious, and frequently unsafe. Large borrowers
are apt to control the bank. If you doubt the propriety of discounting an offering, give the bank the benefit of the doubt and decline it.

If you have reasons to distrust the integrity of a customer, close his account. Never deal with a rascal under the impression that you can prevent him
from cheating you.

Pay your officers such salaries as will enable them to live comfortably and respectably without stealing; and require of them their entire services.
If an officer lives beyond his income, dismiss him; even if his excess of expenditures can be explained consistently with his integrity, still dismiss
him. Extravagance, if not a crime, very naturally leads to crime.

The capital of a bank should be reality, not a fiction; and it should be owned by those who have money to lend, and not by borrowers. Pursue a
straightforward, upright, legitimate banking business. ‘Splendid financing’ is not legitimate banking, and ‘splendid financiers’ in banking
are generally either humbugs or rascals.

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